Don’t Set a Trap for Yourself (Proverbs 26:27)

“Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.”—Proverbs 26:27

You will be caught in the trap you set for another. Why spend time trying to stop someone else from succeeding? This is something I’ve never understood! There are enough blessings for everyone. Life does involve competition. A job posting that attracts 500 applicants. An Ivy League university can only accept a certain number of students. But competition, envy, jealousy, revenge, and so forth, are never an excuse to try and hurt another.

You may have heard the old saying, “If you dig a ditch for me, dig one for yourself.” No doubt that saying stems from this verse. But this verse is not saying that. It is telling us that whoever tries to dig a ditch (pit) for another will fall in that very ditch. People today call this karma: what you put out will come back.

Now you may be wondering about how to avoid ditch digging in such a competitive world. We have to have faith in Spirit that everything will fall into place for us. We have to have an abundance mentality. There are enough blessings for everyone. In my last job in Michigan, I and another coworker were up for the same promotion. My immediate supervisor liked both of us just fine. But her supervisor like my coworker far more than me. She liked how he yelled at the crew. (Sad isn’t it.) Well, he got the promotion. And I went on to transfer to a different management schedule.

One night, I came to run my Sunday midnight shift. He ran Sunday evenings. Several incidents took place during that two hour window when we were both on the property. He didn’t do anything to me personally but he did violate several store policies. I even went behind him to help him out. I don’t know who reported him but when I came in Monday afternoon, my supervisor called me in the office. She showed me the surveillance video from the incidents. You could see what both of us did and didn’t do. He had already been fired! Did I ever get that promotion? Hell no!

Thank God my life is worlds away from that time. My supervisor is still at that store, miserable as ever. The supervisor over her has since been demoted twice, putting her in a position (at another location) lower than my old supervisor’s. God didn’t get her back for me. God forbid. But her nasty attitude and erroneous thought-process began to get her into trouble. I could’ve been angry to not getting the promotion. But I’ve learned to have an abundance mentality. God had better things for me than that promotion. Don’t set a trap for yourself.